the sisters on Maui

Monday, December 1, 2014

ALOHA! well, I guess this is my last
email from Hawaii. This is so surreal! I am so sad to be leaving these
beautiful islands and these wonderful people. I am sad that my time as a
missionary has come to an end, but I am SO excited to see my family!!!!!!

We had a great last week. We talked
to a lot of people and were able to share what we love and invite them to come
unto Christ. We also had the opportunity last night to sing with the other
missionaries in the zone for a musical fireside. It was such a great way to
spend our last Sunday. Also, Sunday morning in church the ward sang aloha oi at
the end of sacrament meeting. This has been a great and emotional week.

Today we went to a Hawaiian museum.
It was really neat to learn a little more about the culture before I come home.

So this is the run down for the next
few days for mom : Tomorrow- packing and packing.....and a little more packing.
Visit a few people and teach a few lessons. Then Wednesday, I go to Honolulu at
8:00am then everyone sings aloha oi one more time. Then we head off to the swap
meet and buy a bunch of souvenirs. Then we go to a temple session. Then the
rest of the day we spend at the Polynesian cultural center. Thursday morning,
we have a testimony meeting then go to Pearl Harbor for a tour of the Arizona.
After that we have some time to repack bags and then we go to the airport. At
7:00 we can say goodbye to any friends that have come to the airport. My ward
mission leader and his wife from my first area are coming to say goodbye. Then
we get on the flight at 9:00pm Hawaii time:) SO CRAZY! but I will be flying
with a bunch of good friends from the mission. Then I land and see my
family!!!!!

Our mission motto here is "We
are grateful to be in the Hawaii Honolulu mission. The ALOHA mission. The
Atonement of Jesus Christ is our message. Love of God and others
is our motivation and Obedience to the commandments and mission rules is
our strength. By sharing the gospel with others we can give them the HA-
the breath of Life, even eternal life. ALOHA!"

I really am so grateful to be
serving here in this wonderful place and with these wonderful people. I love my
mission. And I love what Heavenly Father has taught me here. As I thought about
my mission here in Hawaii coming to an end, a familiar scripture came to my
mind: Doctrine and covenants section 4, verse 3, "Therefore, if ye have
desires to serve God ye are called to the work". And a warm feeling filled
my heart as I realized that my mission is just beginning. I will always serve
my God- whether or not I get to wear a name tag. Yes, certainly, serving as a
full time missionary for the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints is a
wonderful and sacred opportunity, but now I am called to continue my service
for the Lord- just in other ways.

I don't even know how to express how
grateful that I am for the opportunity I've had to serve a mission. These memories will always be treasures to me.
I have learned so much over this year and a half. I have felt so strongly of
Heavenly Fathers love for me and for all of His children. I have come to know
for myself with every part of my soul that Jesus Christ is our Savior, and that
He lives. I know it. I know that this is His church, and that as we live the
gospel of Jesus Christ we will find joy and peace, now and forever.

Maika'i ke akua and Aloha Nui Loa. ( God be with you and I love you forever)

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Okay so I don't even remember what
happened this week!! haha everything is a blur!

okay so we got to serve at pearl harbor
one last time! we traded a bunch of flag
poles off of the battleship in a few assembly lines. Then we swept decks. I
will miss Pearl Harbor.We love the service
and the people there.Wednesday night we got to go to a relief society activity
and learned how to make sugar hand scrubs.

We met with great families who have
become very dear to me. They are so committed to getting involved in the gospel
again. They haven't been coming for a while, but they have been realizing how
much that they need it and they are ready to make the change. It has been so
fun to hear her talk about the changes she is already seeing in her life. She said
that she has started reading the scriptures again and that she has seen a
difference in how patient that she is with her little daughter. she says that
she was able to be so much more patient than she normally would have been …. I
loved to hear her testimony.

Then Thursday was elder N's birthday
(he's one of the elders in the ewa beach 2nd ward with us) so we went over to
the lady who was having us over for dinner's house a little early and we all
blew up balloons. She had made a giant cookie bar and it was super fun! We all
gathered around in the living room and sang and then popped little confetti
streamer popper things and the confetti landed on a little stuffed poodle
toy.....then their almost 2 year old daughter screamed and ran to the poodle
and tore the streamers off of him in horror and threw her little body over him …poor
little thing thought that we had hurt her toy poodle. such a cute little girl!
I'll get pictures with this family. We love them!

Friday we went on exchanges. I
TOTALLY lost my voice.....like frog meets robot. For our companion study we
sang an opening song and I had like a 2 note range. But my voice is back now. The
exchange was fun. But like no one we had planned to see was home. But we did
meet some new people tracting so that is always fun. We love being close to the visitors center too!!

This week in our meeting with the
ward mission leader he was like "so are you leaving on December 3rd?"
and I was like "Ya." and He was like "No." haha then he was
like "We'll call the mission president, this will not be tolerated" This
ward is so great! I am going to miss these people! I'm going to miss so many
things here in Hawaii!!!!!!!!!!

So, now a list of things I am going
to miss when I leave Hawaii:

1. of course the people! SO giving!
so loving!

2. gekkos running away from you
every step you take on the side walk.

3.THE BEACH of course! I know we
don't go on the beach but we can still see it a lot and it's so pretty!

4. how every company here is ALOHA
something... like 'Aloha towing' or 'Aloha dentistry' or 'Aloha cleaning
company' haha something like that.

5. the accent!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and
the local words. "Ho brah, it's no hAnAlulu its hOnOlulu" "na na
na de was choke dakine, ya" "he wen bus up his braddah. Den he neva
take care a him" "I got go to da store for buy some poke." gunna
miss it!

6. the cultural diversity!!! We meet
people from the philipines, samoan, tonga, japan, korea, the mainland, new
Zealand, guam, tahitii, fiji, any kine place!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you name it! So we
have learned how to say hello in planny different languages!!!!!

7. shoyu chicken - wow I never
thought I'd say that. we get a lot of shoyu chicken and I always thought that I
was getting sick of it but now I actually think I'm going to miss it!

8. the random birds that look like
they are karate masters.

9. cockroaches in the churches....no
big deal.

10.the street names are all
beautiful hawaiian words.

I love it!! Okay I am out of time.

There is a slight possibility that I
wont be able to email next week, in which case I'll send a letter to be put on
the blog. But hopefully I'll just be able to email. But if not, see you next
week:) haha

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

okay so this week was super fun! Monday,
we practiced for our zone's musical number for zone conference on Tuesday.

Then Tuesday we spent pretty much
all day in zone conference. It was wonderful! they played a talk from elder
Bednar and he talked about how Heavenly Father doesn't expect us to be perfect
but He does expect us to be clean. I liked that distinction. also, President
pulled me out for my final interview with him!!!!!! I was so surprised! I mean
I knew that it was coming but I didnt think it would be that day but SURPRISE!
He talked about the importance of education and temple attendance and what to
look for in a spouse and all of that jazz.

So our zone did the musical number
and we really did a MUSICAL! we did a meddly of "I hope they call me on a
mission", "called to serve Him" and I'll go where you want me to
go". with the storyline of a young boy preparing to go on his mission,
then the day he opened his call, to the time he had to pray about it to really
resolve that he would go where ever the Lord wanted Him to go. then on to when
he met his trainer and learned how to tract. it was super fun and we got it all
on film so I'll show you in a few weeks:) ( weird to say that) Then at the end of zone
conference I gave my departing testimony with two other sisters. and then
another SURPRISE they started playing "Aloha Oi" on the piano and
everyone sang to us....... man I knew that these things happened but I guess I
just totally forgot! It was so crazy….yeah, I creid . I still can't believe I'm almost pau. ( Pau = finished
or done)

Wednesday one of the elders was sick
so we tried to cover our appointments and theirs....so that was pretty busy!

Thursday, we helped a lady in our
ward to can a bunch of jam. it was super fun!

Friday, was a SUPER SPECIAL
day!!!!!!!!!!!!But not much I can
really share…just know that somedays the spirit is so strong you want to
explode!

Saturday we had a neat experience.
We only had a few minutes to go tracting before our next visit, so we could
have just gone early but we decided to go and tract a few houses. we didn’t
know what street to tract so we drove around for a bit then found one and
turned back around to get to it. we picked three not super scary looking houses
and the first one we went to we got invited in and we taught a lesson and we
are going back this week for another appointment. super cool!! Some people want
to hear about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and they are just waiting for us…

Sunday was busy. well that's just
life I suppose:) but we are practicing a song for the musical fireside and it's
a super great song. we are all excited.

Love you family!!!

Love, Sister Hodgson

PS anyone remember Brad Snell from TNT...many years ago...his little brother came to the best mission !!

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Our zone leaders gave training to us
about having faith and not doubting and boy it changed my life!! Because a lot
of times I think I have faith that God can do anything, but I doubt and think
"maybe He just doesn’t want to do that right now" or "maybe this
is just too high of a goal" and sometimes those doubts have some truth to
them, but that's not the point. The point is we should have faith that not only
does the Lord have the power to bless us, but He WILL bless us!

For example: As missionaries, we
keep track of how many lessons that we teach each week. This helps us to see
when improvement is needed, what works and what doesn't work, how the ward can
help more, etc. Here in the Ewa beach ward, with the elders lessons and our
lessons combined, we had been teaching about 16 lessons a week (about 8 per
companionship). We were like "wow this is kinda a hard area". BUT
this week, our combined total was 41 lessons!!! That was a small miracle! ,
proving he is there …Because, it's not about numbers, but each one of those
numbers represents a person who we met with, talked with and shared more about
God's love, His plan, our Savior's sacrifice, etc. It was an eye opening week
for me to see again that the Lord has more blessings than we are sometimes even
able to imagine for us!

Also we met a lady and we asked her
if we could come by again and meet with her family and she was basically like
"no. i'm always busy". Then we ended up talking about some things
she's done in her life and asking her about her experiences and getting to know
each other and by the end she was like "come back any time!! I’m home
during the day on weekdays!" it was really neat to see the change as we
took time to talk with her. As they say "people don’t care how much you
know until they know how much you care!"

We had some Filipino food this week
including ground up pig's face.....nice!

Also we met a lady who let us try on
her Indian saris? It was totally fun to
play dress up:) (memories of the Hilton girls and Claire Poore)

People have starting setting up
Christmas decorations. and a family we had lunch with even gave us Christmas
gifts because , as she said "I have to give them before you leave!!" I’m
not leaving yet!!!! haha but it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

In Yoga this morning I FINALLY
figured out how to stand on my head....cant wait to show you family:)